Managing pools

You can use the management GUI or the command line interface to work with your managed disks (MDisks) and storage pools. To work with MDisks in the management GUI, select Pools > MDisks by Pool.

CLI managed disk tasks

You can use the command-line interface to collect dump files from drives. Issue the triggerdrivedump command to collect internal log files from MDisks. Dump files are generated in the /dumps/drive directory. You can use lsdumps to list dump files, cpdumps to copy dump files and cleardumps to delete files from the dumps directory. Refer to the Command-line interface guide for more details.

You can use the command-line interface to create MDisks on a system.

Attention: If you add an MDisk to a system as an MDisk, any data on the MDisk is lost. If you want to keep the data on an MDisk (for example, because you want to import storage that was previously not managed), you must create image mode volumes instead.

Important: You can specify different extent sizes for different systems; however, you cannot migrate (volumes) between systems with different extent sizes. If possible, create all your systems with the same extent size.

Issue the mkmdiskgrp command to create a storage pool. You can specify MDisks at creation time, or add them later with the addmdisk command. Refer to the Command-line interface guide for more details.

You can use the command-line interface to remove MDisks from a system. When you remove MDisks, the managed disk objects that represent the MDisks might still exist. The system cannot access these MDisks because they were unconfigured or removed. You must remove the managed disk objects. Run the includemdisk command on each affected managed disk object. Run rmmdisk on each affected managed disk object to put it into the unmanaged mode. Run detectmdisk for the system to rescan the network and detect that the MDisks no longer exist. Refer to the Command-line interface guide for more details.

You can use the command-line interface to determine the relationship between volumes and managed disks (MDisks). To display a list of the IDs that correspond to the MDisks that comprise the volume, use lsvdiskmember. To display a list of IDs that correspond to the volumes that are using this MDisk, use lsmdiskmember. To display a table of volume IDs and the corresponding number of extents that are being used by each volume, use lsmdiskextent. To display a table of MDisk IDs and the corresponding number of extents that each MDisk provides as storage for the specified volume, use lsvdiskextent.

You can use the command-line interface to determine the relationship between MDisks and controller LUNs. Each MDisk corresponds with a single RAID array, or with a single partition on a specified RAID array. Each RAID controller defines a LUN number for this disk. The LUN number and controller name or ID are needed to determine the relationship between MDisks and RAID arrays or partitions. Use lsmdisk to display the controller name or controller ID and the controller LUN number. Use lscontroller to display the vendor ID, product ID and WWNN of the controller. You can use this information to determine what is being presented to the MDisk. From the native user interface for the specified controller, list the LUNs it is presenting and match the LUN number with that found using lsmdisk. This provides the exact RAID array or partition that corresponds with the MDisk.